Transportable natural foods stores?

Two enterprising grad students from Seattle have come up with an innovative solution to food deserts—a store that can be installed inside a cargo container and placed virtually anywhere, providing fresh produce and staples to the neighborhood. Organic Connections, the magazine for Natural Vitality, explains.

Food deserts are a prevalent issue. In rural areas across the United States (not to mention internationally) innumerous cities suffer from a lack of diversity in their food choices—corner bodegas, gas stations, and fast food restaurants carry only processed snacks and commercially baked goods.

But two entrepreneurial women have ingeniously created a method to bring groceries containing fresh produce, eggs, grains, milk and lean meats to food deserts—with little cost and much mobility. Visionaries Jacqueline Gjurgevich and Carrie Ferrence are the brains behind Stockbox Grocers, a company that transforms ordinary shipping containers into mini grocery stores containing much-needed food staples.

While the company is still in it’s infancy, a prototype of Stockbox was recently met with great success in an apartment complex parking lot in the Delridge neighborhood of Seattle. “We’ve received attention from people all over the country identifying with our mission and what the Stockbox story is,” Jacqueline reported in an interview with Organic Connections. “They could visualize it in their community, whether it is in another urban environment or whether it’s rural, or anywhere in between. People are asking for access to good food in their communities. Once we get the first permanent store on the ground and prove that our model really works, we’re going to be able to deploy it throughout the nation. We don’t want to just be in south Seattle; we want to be all over the country.”